Why are website geeks so bloody hard to understand?

So, following on from my 'why don't my buttons work' thread last week, I ask my webgeek mate to help me do some nice buttons with rollover and hit states. Apparently, using Flash isn't the way to do it.

'So how do I do it, then?'

'Use HTML'

'How?'

'give each of your links a class

so put class="button", or something inside the < a> tag

then in your stylesheet put:

.button{

width: button_graphic_width

height: button_graphic_height

display: inline-block;

text-indent: -99999px;

}

oh and also

background: url('/image/button_graphic') 0 0 no-repeat;

or wherever you put the button graphics

then put:

.button:hover

{

background: url('/image/button_graphic_rollover') 0 0 no-repeat;

}

you might need a different class for each link because the rollovers are different colours

or you could use two classes:

class="button green-button"

and just change the button:hover to green-button:hover

and so on for each different link

there'll be loads of examples on line

make some kind of sense?'

Er, no! I speak English, no some geek code. Can you not explain in real language, please?

Apparently not.

Do people lose the ability to communicate properly, when they get into doing all this 'code' stuff???

FWIW; the buttons actually appear, and have their rollover and hit states, but clicking on them doesn't actually do anything. I have to place linked text underneath, which kind of defeats the object.

**** Geeks. I woon't mind, but it's us 'arty types' with a sense of aesthetics, that make your stuff look good! Who looks at the bloody code? Only other geeks!

so you want someone to explain how to do a techie piece of work, without him showing you how to do it??? RTFM or stop whinging and be thankful hes taken time out to help you do something which you couldn't do by yourself

so how would he explain it then? write about 3 pages of test, that would eventually have to use the code you don't understand.
I don't understand quantum phsyics, if I needed to understand it I'd buy a book and read it, I wouldn't hassle a friend, then get upest when i didn't understand what he was talking about...

Sorry RudeBoy but you can only symplify things so much. If you asked Stephen Hawkin to explain some of his work to you, it'd be fair to expect you to perhaps need at least physics degree first, maybe more.

If you can't understand what you were told, it's not your mates fault, you're just not equipped with the basic skills required to do html and css.

Well it's very straight forward but I appreciate there is a bit of a learning curve.

First - HTML: this defines what your page does, and what it is made of.
e.g.Singletrack
is a hyperlink written html.

Secondly, the CSS is how you decide what each of the html elements will look like. CSS is 'Cascading Style Sheet' because the styles cascade, that is their properties get passed down to their child elements.

So if I wanted to style that hyperlink I just wrote I'd give it a class.

If it were easy to do everything, then no-one would make any money doing it. There has to be a line somewhere, buttons are it in this case. You have to get off your backside and learn it, or else pay someone to do it.

If it were easy to do everything, then no-one would make any money doing it. There has to be a line somewhere, buttons are it in this case. You have to get off your backside and learn it, or else pay someone to do it.

Very poor rant.

A justified rant though - I wouldn't make a living doing this if it was easy but it's amazing how every seems to thing making a website is something that just anybody should be able to do.

Christ, I've been doing this for nearly a decade and I'm still in awe at how awesome some others people are at this!

Seems to me your friend went to a lot of trouble to help. The fact that you expect to be able to write a set up a website without apparently wanting to make the effort of understanding HTML or Cascading Style Sheets (or doing any research for yourself) is your fault not his. Either take what he says on trust or go to the trouble of finding out for yourself.

TJ - a lot of professional language is developed because it allows people who understand the fundamentals of a subject to communicate complex ideas quickly and accurately. It's not designed to create a closed shop, although it might serve that purpose as well.